Haldane clocked out and they walked to Cindy's Café across the street. "Good control of the situation," Sean said admiringly. "You got us out of the store and away from any potential hostages."

Jack smiled. "I'll take that as a compliment."

Inside Cindy's Café, a waitress put a tray down at their table. Both Jack and Sean got the Whey Out There and Molly got the Chocolate, egg and soy Triple Indulgence. She sipped hers. It tasted so good she let herself drink. "I was so scared," she said. "I thought you were the Nazis and were going to take us away."

"Who do you mean, Nazis?"

Sean took a slug of his drink. "They called themselves Threshold."

Jack nodded. "Nazis. Good name. How did you learn of them?"

"Mary loves a fresh salad and there is this farmer's market not far from the precinct. I used to stop after shift and get tomatoes and other veggies there. Then it was like we had the flu or food poisoning one weekend and when we felt better we started eating and eating. I figured it was just recovering from the flu, but it didn't stop. But I felt great. They had a random PT test and I did better than anyone else in all categories, better than anything I could have dreamed of before. And I was better at the office. It was like I was thinking so much clearer."

Molly nodded. "I was going through economy size jars of Jiff peanut butter like gumdrops, but I wasn't gaining much weight and I was healthy." She smiled and played with Sean's hand. "And Pat sure was healthy. It was wonderful."

"Then there was a secret operation. That's where I heard of these Threshold goons. I was called as part of the SWAT team to cover them disappearing the tomato seller and all the customers in the farmer's market."

"Pat told me and I couldn't believe it. He didn't act scared but I knew he was."

"I started arranging to take a vacation. I told them it was our dream vacation to Borneo we were going to take while trying to have a baby. I had six weeks back leave. We packed up the car and drove off. I figured maybe we'd go to South America or Canada."

"Borneo?"

Sean took another slug. "I wanted a long head start on them."

"Why did you come here?"

"We ran low on gas and were hungry. Mary saw all the foods we have been craving in the Mini-mart and we wondered if there could be anyone like us here."

Jack nodded. "The whole town is improved. Except for a few who are so sick they were worried they couldn't make it. But they're all so ill they won't make it the six years anyway."

Molly took a long slurp, hitting the bottom of the tall glass. "Improved? Six years?"

"That's what we call it, improved. And anyone who isn't improved in five or six years will die."

"Why?"

"Do you know much about outer space?"

Molly nodded. "I had all the science courses to get my teaching credential."

"Eta Carinae is a star that's about 7,500 light years away. If you look at the astronomical references for it, you'll find that it's a hypergiant luminous blue variable double star. It's one of the biggest stars in the galaxy, and it has the highest luminosity of any known star. It's so luminous that the NASA scientists who studied it through the Hubble telescope will tell you it's exceeded the Eddington luminosity limit, which is the upper bounds where a star can remain stable. They'll also tell you that it is that Eta Carinae doubled it's brightness in 1998 and according to Dr. Immler of NASA the star is unstable and could explode within our lifetime."

Molly nodded, remembering when Captain Manning had said to have NASA check right ascension 10 hours and 45 minutes and a declination of –59 degrees and 41 minutes. "What has that got to do with getting improved?"

"What NASA doesn't know is that 7,500 years ago, Eta Carinae became a gamma ray and neutron radiation particle fountain that's pointed right at us. They can't tell because the radiation is traveling at the speed of light and the light from that star that's reaching Earth now is from six years before the star exploded. But when it hits us all the people and animals and plants that aren't improved will die."

"How do you know?"

"I guess they told the leaders. We've all been warned."

"They? The black bugs in the glass forest?"

Jack nodded, finishing his drink. "They're a very advanced alien race. They can't land here because they are silicone based and their bodies use ammonia and fluorine for their metabolism. To them, water is an acid and oxygen is a poison gas. But they know intelligence like ours is so rare they want to help."

Molly carefully sucked up every bit at the bottom of her glass. "We kept seeing that sea in our dreams and I wondered if it was from the Book of Revelations, the end of days. This is all so awful it's like the end of time."

Haldane nodded. "Many have wondered if this is what St. John saw. Are we the Saints in the last days fighting the army of the devil? Are we the saviors on Mount Zion? Is our own government the devil's great and abominable church? We have to fight our own ignorant government to have a chance at preventing the extinction of our species. We know there will be massive ecological devastation because of all the species we don't get improved. It's a race against time to save as much as possible. But at least you get to join being part of the solution rather than the problem."

After Sean finished his, Jack put the tray with their three glasses up on the counter and nodded and smiled to Cindy behind the register. "We closed the motel to discourage outside visitors, but we've got a network of people who run informal bed and breakfasts. Let me get you with one of those."

Eta Carinae is a real star. Everything described about NASA's observations is true. Even Dr. Immler is real. Just look it up on Wikipedia. The coordinates are somewhat off of what Captain Manning said but it's so good a match I thought I'd use it.

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